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Judge finalizes Cherokee girl’s adoption in South Carolina

By Meg Kinnard

Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A state judge on Wednesday finalized a South Carolina couple’s adoption of a 3-year-old girl of Cherokee heritage, ruling that the child should be moved from her current home in Oklahoma.

While making official the yearslong pursuit by Matt and Melanie Capobianco, though, the ruling by a family court judge in Charleston was far from the final legal action in a complicated, emotional case that has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We are very grateful to be able to say Matt and Melanie are the adoptive parents of baby girl Veronica,” James Fletcher Thompson, the couple’s attorney, said after a closed, 90-minute hearing in Charleston. “We consider there are no winners. There are no winners when an almost 4-year-old child has been in this kind of legal limbo. We’re now looking toward the future, recognizing we’re looking forward to having Veronica back.”

The Capobiancos, hand-picked by the girl’s Bartlesville birth mother to adopt her, raised Veronica for two years and have sought to adopt her since birth. But the girl’s biological Nowata father, a member of the Cherokee Nation who had never met his daughter, challenged that adoption, arguing that federal law favored the girl being raised by him and in cultural traditions.

State courts initially sent Veronica to live with Dusten Brown in Oklahoma in 2011, citing the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, which seeks to keep Indian children from being taken from their homes and placed with non-Indian adoptive or foster parents. She has been living there with him since then.

The Capobiancos appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which earlier this year said South Carolina’s courts should decide what happens to the girl. That state’s highest court subsequently ruled a family court should finalize the couple’s adoption, which it did Wednesday.

The family court judge also considered a timetable for Veronica’s transition, which Thompson would not discuss after court. But in documents filed in response to the biological father’s request that the U.S. Supreme Court halt the adoption — a request he made of the high court last week — other attorneys for the adoptive couple on Wednesday filed a plan that lays out a weeklong strategy for gradually reintroducing the Capobiancos to the child.

The process, which would begin with the girl spending a few hours a day with the couple, building up to a full day visit and an overnight together, is a difficult one for all involved, wrote the social worker who prepared the couple’s plan. But making sure Veronica is met with positive encouragement is crucial.

“Her issues must always be the focus,” Deena McMahon wrote in the report. “Veronica is at a critical moment in life and needs unconditional regard for the fragile emotional tasks ahead of her.”

The nation’s high court has yet to rule on Brown’s request, in which he argued that South Carolina justices misread the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling empowering a South Carolina court to finalize the girl’s placement. The Cherokee Nation joined in Brown’s plea, which also argued that the state court did not take account of Veronica’s interests.

In a statement issued Wednesday, the Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes — which includes the Cherokee Nation — called the state court’s decision “a severe injustice.”

“The Brown family, including Veronica, deserves their due process,” the tribes said. “They do not deserve to have their lives forever transformed by the South Carolina judicial system without cause or consideration.”

The Council also said it supports a federal civil rights lawsuit filed Wednesday by several American Indian groups seeking a hearing to protect the girl’s best interests. As part of that lawsuit, a federal judge also denied a request to halt Wednesday’s adoption proceeding.

The Capobiancos’ attorney would not comment on the other court cases, and attorneys for Brown did not talk to reporters after the hearing. In a statement distributed before court, Brown — who is also seeking to adopt Veronica in state court in Oklahoma — said he was “shocked and deeply saddened” that South Carolina’s courts were moving forward with the Capobiancos’ adoption of his daughter.

“Please, for Veronica’s sake, just stop,” Brown wrote, addressing the couple directly in his statement. “Stop, and ask yourself if you really believe this is best for her.”